


Opened

by unsettled



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: M/M, Madness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've given him Blackwood's cell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Opened

The stones are whispering to him, and the bars serve as much to keep everyone else out as to keep him in. There are hands on the other side of the bars, there are faces with words crawling out of them like worms, making meaningless noises. He is pressed in the corner, a huddle of bones, head thrown back to leave a bloodied vow mark upon rock, eyes closed; if they stay closed, he can pretend he is in the dark by choice. He wonders if they have put him in Blackwood's cell. The stones are not telling, as greedy with secrets as his lord can be. Could be.

It wells up within him, at the reminder, something between a scream and a moan, something that could be death or agony or desire, a sound he bites back, a taste of copper in his mouth. There is a hole in his chest, where his beating heart used to be; he has torn it out to trade to devils for his lord's safe return; there is a raw mess of nerves and ligaments where his voice resided, offered to angels for an intervention; there are hollows where his eyes once were, burned away by sights not meant for man to endure.

There is stone beneath his fingers, cool, damp, etched with trails of power, they have put him in the same cell, and all he can see is the bridge, and the coat flapping in the wind, the chains dangling, wrapped and twisted, and he won't look, won't see the figure caught, framed by bridge and coat and chains, because he is not there, is not becoming soulless flesh, food for the worms, has not been forced into a traitor's death. He has risen before and he will rise again, and his glory will cause them to fall to the ground; they will ask for forgiveness and there will be none.

Coward wishes it was that simple, but everything points to an ending he's trying to pretend doesn't exist. Maybe he'll hang, the choke of the noose providing a gateway to his lord; maybe they'll hang him next to Blackwood; maybe there will be no one to greet him when he arrives in Hell. The stone is disintegrating under his fingers, and he is tearing his hands raw on flesh instead, supple hide and muscled back, made to bear the marks he leaves in pleasure. The skin hangs before him, displaying the furrows of nails, flayed to create a coat of his own. A gift; Blackwood was always giving him things, watching him, waiting for a smile, waiting to stoop down and catch it with his lips. He tastes the cry in his mouth again, and is too late to stop it. Distantly, he is aware of the sound, the echo of it bouncing back at him, going on, longer than his lungs can hold out, louder than his throat can produce.

Your eyes will be opened, he had been told, and they were. Now he simply wished he could shut them.


End file.
